


Language of Flowers

by Beldam



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, very vague shipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 10:44:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12910269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beldam/pseuds/Beldam
Summary: Genji and McCree talk using the only language they can.





	Language of Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> My submission for the blackwatchzine! I have my gripes about this piece, but I hope you'll enjoy it nevertheless haha

 

The window box outside McCree’s room at Swiss HQ is a travesty.

For a time, Genji observes McCree’s care of it without comment, but the state of the garden only worsens. Soon, staying silent becomes a test of endurance--a test which Genji ultimately fails.

“You give them too much water.”

McCree pulls back the pitcher he’s emptied into the unlucky garden. He doesn’t seem surprised that Genji’s appeared outside his window, hanging off the sill of the room next door—never mind that they’ve never spoken outside a mission until now.

“Shoot, do I?” He leans back to look at his handiwork: the drooping peonies, the shriveled carnations, the loamy mud flowing over the edge of the adobe box. He shoots off a sheepish smile. “I grew up in the desert. Never had much of a head for flowers.”

“Then why keep them?”

“They belonged to whoever was in here before me. Wasn’t just gonna leave ‘em to themselves, so--”

“You thought you would put them out of their misery?”

McCree huffs. “Aw c’mon. I ain’t doing that bad of a job, am I?”

“No,” Genji grumbles. “Worse.”

The cowboy tuts, tipping his hat over his eyes. Genji knows the look; he’s not used to being bad at things. “And you could do better?”

“Effortlessly.”

“Then prove it, darlin’.”

Genji shoves McCree out of the way to get inside; the garden is both of theirs from then on out.

* * *

 

“Do you know what these mean?” Genji asks one day.

“Mean in what?” McCree mutters back, not looking up from the window box. A fungus has taken to the peonies and he’s weeding the infected flowers out. Despite Genji’s aid, the box is a lost cause. Too little too late.

“Flower language,” Genji explains, leaning against the wall beside the window. “ _Hanakotoba_ , it is called in Japan.” He gestures to the dying garden. “Carnations mean love. Peonies mean bravery.”

“Huh. Didn’t know you spoke flower,” McCree chuckles. He dumps a fistful of rotten blossoms into the trashcan at his feet.

Genji shrugs. “Putting together a meaningful arrangement is considered… romantic. Which was relevant to my interests, for a time.”

“Yeah? Caught a lot of tail speaking peony?”

“You would not believe how much,” Genji responds gravely. “I mean, a truly disgusting amount.”

They laugh, in the awkward way of people that are not sure if they are friends. More flowers come loose from the soil, disintegrating in McCree’s hands.

“You’ve killed these, you know,” Genji says. “You will have to plant new ones.”

“S’no point.” McCree swats dirt off against his thighs. “I’ll just kill those too.”

“No,” Genji shakes his head. “I will teach you. You will know better, the second time around.”

McCree hums. “Then teach me how to talk to ‘em while you’re at it. It’ll be nice to chat to something other than the surly bastards ‘round here.”

Laughter sticks in Genji’s lungs like burrs. “As you like.”

* * *

 

The garden falls to the wayside after what should be a simple surveillance op—easy, by the standards of Blackwatch. Small fare.

Six agents go. Of them, the first four are MIA. Reyes returns unscathed. McCree comes back with one less arm and a bad eye. Dr Ziegler says the eye will heal—the arm is gone for good. For the first time since Genji’s known him, Reyes won’t look anyone in the face. He lingers outside the medbay while McCree gets surgery, refusing to go in even when the doctor says he can. Reinhardt shows up and they exchange words—clips of speech. _Talk to him_ and _not your fault_ are all Genji can make out.

Genji only gets to see McCree once, before he is cloistered away to heal (even though Genji can see it in his eyes that there’ll be no fixing this). Genji cuts some flowers from McCree’s window box to bring to him, to help brighten his sickbed. Irises. They’re hardier than peonies, and McCree likes their meaning, when Genji explains it to him.

_Loyalty._

Though it’s his first instinct, he does McCree the courtesy of not looking away as he enters the medbay. McCree’s left arm is a mass of blood and wires. Soiled bandages cut red-white lines across his skin. His good eye follows Genji across the room with the vacant precision of a haunted house painting.

“After this” -- Genji slides the flowers into the vase at McCree’s bedside -- “the two of us will match.”

McCree laughs coarsely, revealing, (mercifully) some shred of himself. “Guess there’s a bright side after all.”

Genji moves to the chair already next to the bed. He can’t bring himself to sit. “Will you tell me what happened?” he asks. “Reyes refuses to speak to us about it.”

Another laugh, sharp, almost sarcastic. “You don’t say,” McCree says darkly. “Wonder what cat caught his tongue.”

There’s an uncomfortable, but not unfamiliar, roiling in Genji’s stomach. He thinks of Reyes, refusing to meet his eyes--how Hanzo had done similarly, before, in the nights leading up to That Night; the silence that had plagued them until then. He taps at the bolts in his knuckles.

“Did you know that it is possible to say ‘revenge’ in _hanakotoba_?” he offers. “With _sayuri._ Fire lilies.”

McCree’s eye flicks to Genji, then away.

“Nasty thing to say,” he breathes, “using something as pretty as flowers.”

“Flowers are supposed to speak one’s heart. One’s truest thoughts are not, by necessity, pretty things.”

McCree nods absently. In the silence, Genji can hear him breathing thickly. Choked, as if by wisteria. “Never thought of myself as havin’ much of a taste for revenge.”

“Nor did I, before.” Genji shrugs. “Things change.”

“Guess they do.” As if needing to preoccupy his remaining hand, McCree twists a stem of iris idly between his fingers. “Like these more,” he rasps darkly, “but I could get used to lilies.”

* * *

 

 “Where are you going, McCree?”

The cowboy pauses in the hall heading to the base’s main doors. It’s past midnight and Genji’s just trying to walk off some phantom pain--he isn’t expecting to see anyone at this hour. Least of all McCree, who’s been scarce for weeks.

He glances at McCree’s new arm. The prosthetic is shoddy and mannequin-like, clearly not a permanent solution. He doesn’t look at it a second time.

“I need some air,” McCree says. Genji believes him. Recovery has left him looking shriveled. Suffocated. Still, he has half a mind to warn McCree that Dr Ziegler will be livid if she sees him walking around like this.

“Shall I join you?” he says instead. “I do not think you should be alone.”

His offering is rebuffed with a miserable smile. “Aw darlin’, quit worrying.” McCree says, pushing past. “I’ll be just fine.”

This, Genji does not believe.

“McCree,” he starts. McCree glances over his shoulder but keeps pace. Genji grits his teeth. “I’ve neglected your garden while you’ve been away,” he says, and though it isn’t what he _wanted_ to say, it’s not untrue. “Shall we start over again? Let’s grow something bigger. How about camellias this time?”

Something swells behind McCree’s eyes and his steps falter. He swings back round, spurs jangling as he closes the space between them.

“Sure thing, sweetpea,” he whispers. He hooks one arm around the back of Genji’s neck to reel him into his chest, and though Genji stumbles into the embrace, he doesn’t fight it. There’s a pressure against Genji’s hair that makes his chest feel tight. “We’ll talk more about it in the mornin’.”

Genji doesn’t hold it against McCree that he’s lying, and there’ll be no morning talk, or camellias, or anything else. The cowboy always was sentimental; expert marksman, but couldn’t shoot straight to save his life.

He’s learned more _hanakotoba_ than Genji thought: sweetpeas mean ‘goodbye.’

* * *

 

Genji comes back to what remains of Swiss HQ years after the fact. It’s all memorials, now. Graves. There’s no trace anymore of McCree’s room, the window box, the unlucky gardens they grew. Earlier in Genji’s life, it would have hurt to see it this way; another home, in ashes. Now he knows to cherish what’s remained rather than mourn what hasn’t.

He wanders across the grounds, paying his respects, picking out things he remembers, and things he does not. Tall pines. Clusters of carnations. Unfamiliar succulents growing on Reyes’ grave.

A bush with dark green leaves, unfurling beneath the statue of a forgotten man.

He frowns. It’s a camellia plant, only a few years old. It hasn’t flowered yet, but it’s doing well in this unfamiliar soil. Genji crouches beside it, thumbing the mouth-shaped leaves. He wonders what colour flowers it’ll have. White (for waiting); yellow (for longing); red (for love)?

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to say it?” he chuckles, but maybe it wouldn’t be.

They were always bad at talking, the two of them. Could never say with words what could only be articulated with flowers.

 


End file.
